About a year ago when I was building my new PC I made the fateful decision to try to use Linux as my daily driver operating system. This was around the time when Microsoft announced that they would be ending support for Windows 10. I had previously tinkered with linux in my youth, mainly with Ubuntu and Linux Mint (Ubuntu in a trench coat), and thought that it wouldn’t be the most difficult thing in the world to at least try.

Over a year later I still daily drive Linux on my PC, using it for nearly everything I do. With the proliferation of AI and it being forced into literally any and all aspects of life more and more people will be considering the swap to Linux, perhaps even you. Hopefully this blog post can provide some insights and warnings on what to expect when making the change.

The First Attempt

When installing Linux for the first time on to my new PC I first decided to try Linux Mint. I had used it in the past and my father daily drives it, which meant I thought that it would be easy enough to use. As well as this it comes with the cinnamon desktop environment out of the box, which is very similar to the desktop experience of windows.

After installing and booting the PC, everything seemed to be going well! I had Firefox, Steam, Discord all up and running very quickly. Then I started having issues with Mint. There were a bunch of small issues that I had with the workflow of Mint that all added up to make me really not like using it. I remember having the admin password prompt pop up every time I wanted to do seemingly anything with the system, which got very annoying quickly. Not only that, the main way to manage software being an app store type program rubbed me the wrong way.

What really tipped me over the line on not using Mint was a single package I wanted to use not being up to date on Mint’s package repositories. I wanted to play Counter-Strike 2¹ at a custom resolution and after a bit of searching found that this was possible with a piece of software called gamescope. When using the version that was available on Mint at the time, it just didn’t work with the settings I was giving it. It turns out that the launch options I wanted were available on the latest version, but the version I had access to was out of date.

These cacophony of annoyances led me to start distro-hopping for a bit. A friend of mine then recommended me to use EndeavourOS, which is an Arch based distro. Much to the dismay of my boyfriend (who thought me using Arch would eventually lead to me bricking my PC) I wrote a boot drive, formatted Mint, and gave it a go.

The Salty Run-back

Installing EndeavourOS was very simple, as its graphical installer practically guided me through the process. One I had it running, it took me a little bit to get used to using the terminal for installing software. Once learnt it turned out to be simple, pacman -S to install, pacman -R to uninstall, and pacman -Syu to do a system-wide update.² For packages that are on the Arch User Repository, it’s as simple as replacing pacman with yay.

Once I had everything up to speed with where I was on Mint, I gave gamescope another attempt. With the version on Arch being up to date, it actually worked! I was running Counter-Strike 2 at 1440*1080 stretched on Linux.³ The fact I was able to do this rather easily came to the surprise of my partner, who’s last attempt with gaming on Linux didn’t end well. However he made one crucial mistake when he tried gaming on Linux, which is he did it in the past.

Gaming on Linux is an extremely viable option now thanks mainly to the success of the Steam Deck, which runs SteamOS out of the box. The amount of work Valve has put into making the Steam Deck as good as it is has made gaming on Linux an extremely smooth experience. When I install a new game on EndeavourOS on Steam, Steam automatically uses either the latest or the developer-chosen Proton version to use, I don’t have to go out of my way to make sure I’ve got the right Wine version with the right settings so emulate Windows.

Daily Use

Over the past year I have really fallen in love with daily driving EndeavourOS. There have been some issues along the way, but none of them were big enough to warrant calling them an “Arch moment”. At one point I decided to swap from Cinnamon as my desktop environment to Plasma. I must have done something wrong during the process, because I managed to have them both installed at once with neither of them fully functional. I ended up clean reinstalling EndeavourOS and using Plasma from the get go.

Since swapping to Plasma, I haven’t had any issues. It seems that Linux has come a very long way since I last used it, so much so that I am able to use the version of Linux famous for breaking. Whenever I launch Windows to work on music, I’m always astounded at how slow it runs compared to Linux. It’s genuinely unacceptable that Windows has gotten to the point where it takes two entire minutes for a few programs to lunch after logging in.

Why I Still Run Windows

Unfortunately I was not able to completely remove myself from the hellish Microsoft ecosystem. The software that I use to make music, Ableton Live, is native to only Windows and MacOS. There have been some recent updates to music software, mainly VST3, which either add or improve Linux compatibility, but the style of music that I make uses more plugins that you can think of.

To be able to transfer my music production over to Linux, I would need to have every plugin I use to implement a Linux native version. This happening is less likely than winning the lottery, so I will have to keep Windows installed for the foreseeable future.

In Conclusion

Swapping from Windows to Linux was a surprisingly simple process, with only minor hiccups. The barrier of entry to daily driving Linux these days seems to just be installing the operating system. The modern “beginner-friendly” distros all have the user experience for Windows users fairly seamless. However with me wanting to get more in the weeds of the system, the only thing I really had to do is learn how to use a CLI. Once I was comfortable running around my computer from a terminal, I was able to daily drive EndeavourOS.

If you are also looking at swapping to Linux from Windows, give it a go! Gaming on Linux is as easy as ever and general productivity is more than doable. The only reason you wouldn’t be able to completely swap from Windows is if you use a truly Windows-only piece of software, like Ableton Live. Another thing that you won’t be able to do on Linux is play games that use a kernel level anti-cheat. However if you play a game with that level of anti-cheat there a probably more important things you should change before your operating system.

Things To Look Out For

If you are about to try Linux out yourself, here is a list of things to be aware of.

1. Be prepared for things to break. It doesn’t take that many steps to get yourself into a position where one wrong move can irreversibly damage your system. Be patient and use common sense when tinkering with things.

2. Learn the command line interface. While intimidating at first, once you learn your way around a CLI it will be far easier to work with a Linux system. This is also essential in the event where your graphical interface breaks, and you need to resort to a CLI TTY to troubleshoot. I had to go through this when trying to change my desktop environment.

3. The community is here to help. There are a abundance of forums online where people talk about Linux. Chances are that someone else has encountered any issue you may come across, and the solution will be on a forum. However you should take these discussions with a grain of salt, people online can also have the most backwards opinions on things and their advice can be worse than useless. Reddit tends to be a nesting ground for this.⁴

4. Failure is always an option. Linux just might not be for you. You shouldn’t feel obligated to stick with Linux just because you saw a video or read a blog post about how good someones experience with it was. Windows and MacOS are the dominant forces in operating systems for a reason.